Music Festival Season: Costume or Fashion?
Words by Vera Fortun Marco
eds. Mistral Zerbi
Festival season is back! Kickstarted by Coachella this past April, Music Festival season is officially here. With the weather getting warmer and summer getting nearer, all our favourite celebrities and fashion icons are trying (some, too hard) to leave a mark with their festival fits this year. However, the question is: Are they succeeding?
Coachella 2025 has brought us some of the best and worst examples of festival style so far. With some celebrities embracing the return of Boho Chic as shown on the runway, and others taking Tik Tok trends to the limit, showing up in outfits that look more like costumes than fashion. This has opened up a conversation on social media about where we should draw the line in festival fashion: should we embrace the extravagance and costume-like styles or is it time to return to the basic but chic outfits of 90s icons?
To find and answer, I have turned to my favourite source of knowledge: Vogue.
After Coachella, Vogue released an article showcasing their top 39 2025 Coachella outfits. However, more than half of the styles praised in this article were those worn by performers on stage. Does this mean that extravagant costume-like outfits, typically associated with artists performing on stage, are now the desired aesthetic for music festivals? Or is it simply a sign that the fashion of the attendees has become increasingly uninteresting, drawing attention back to the performers instead? A closer look at the styles of the attendees seems to suggest the latter. This year there have been three identifiable categories of celebrity-favourite styles.
First, those who embraced the return of Runway Boho Chic. Celebrities like Anna Taylor-Joy, Skyelar Chase and Tezza Barton, drew inspiration from Kate Moss’ 90s festival looks, delivering some of my favourite styles of this year. Personally, Tezza Barton’s Chloé look was one of the best outfits we have witnessed at Coachella. The blue tull and flared sleeves gave the piece an interesting dimension while remaining light enough to be practical in the Coachella heat. A true example of the high fashion Boho Chic we know and love.
The second category –which includes celebrities like Rosé, Lisa, Jennie Kim and Jooshica – I like to call desert edge. An adaptation of edgy grunge styles that fit in perfectly with the desert feel of Coachella. Leather crop tops for edge and baggy jeans for comfort. Sunglasses that add attitude to the outfit but also protect you against the dust. I used these four celebrities as examples because I think they knew how to play with the boundaries of fashion and costume without going too far, unlike some other attendees like Julia Fox, who transformed the grunge fashion style into a costume. High leather boots, sheer glitter tights and a corset. While I understand some might find this fun and interesting, I can’t help but wonder how she survived in those boots during the long festival hours, dance in such a restricting top piece or bear the itchiness of those tights. I may not have been to many Coachella’s (I have been to none actually…) but I have watched enough celebrities’ ‘get ready with me for Coachella’ videos to know that the outfit could not have been comfortable.
The final category I call: Missed the memo? These are all the outfits that tried too hard to combine different styles,making them either too impractical or simply missed the mark on festival attire. For example, Cardi B’s purple jumpsuit and fur boots. The fur must have had her feet burning by the end of the night, and they did not add much to the overall style at all. Likewise, her leather jacket and long leggings were unsuitable for the hot Coachella weather, making her outfit look out of place. Similarly, Kendall Jenner’s Old Money style, though beautiful and elegant, did not give Coachella. I could not help but worry about the survival of her dress. The light colours of the fabric seemed destined to be damaged and stained, the delicate-looking finish of each dress could be so easily ripped by the crowds or simply by dancing. Those dainty heels, combined with the heat, and constant movement were bound to leave painful blisters. These impracticalities could be overlooked if they had made the design more creative or interesting, but compared to festival looks worn by icons like Kate Moss, Kendall’s dress simply looked out of place.
After taking a closer look at the 2025 Coachella celebrity outfits it is clear that festival style is changing. However, it seems that every celebrity has a different understanding of what defines festival fashion. Some think that Coachella is synonymous with being trendy, as shown by the presence of ‘old money’ style or Boho Chic, others have interpreted it as an opportunity to experiment with colour, cuts and fabrics or an opportunity to recreate the styles of past festival icons. The question now is whether these different interpretations have given attendees an opportunity to experiment with their styles or whether this has shifted the focus away from fashion expression and towards performative showbiz .